A large percentage of people fly for business reasons. Can you imagine every sales rep on your plane on the way to a meeting or conference talking loudly on their phones the whole flight?

When you land, what happens? All those phone calls you would have had to endure as a passenger all happen at once as you're trying to get off the plane.

Keep the myth alive, people.

If you've ever turned you phone on during flight, you'd know that this is a non-issue as well. Typically, you're flying way out of the range of any cell tower to get a good and stable enough signal to carry a conversation.

The only time that isn't an issue are the critical phases of flight: take-off and landing. These are times in the flight where you want people paying as much attention as possible, so use of electronics is a safety issue.

opaqueluminosity:HotWingAgenda: During the 1980s, toilets on planes used a blue liquid that pushed waster from the bowl into a storage tank.

This liquid added weight to the aircraft

Say what? Did they teleport the blue liquid up from ground control for each flush?

It doesn't say each flush added to the weight of the aircraft...

Well the full passage says, "During the 1980s, toilets on planes used a blue liquid that pushed waster from the bowl into a storage tank. This liquid added weight to the aircraft, which consumed more fuel, and if it leaked, frozen blocks of waste could end up falling over town and cities." That implies that the flushing was what added weight, and more fuel was consumed when the toilet added that weight, potentially causing a leak in the waste tank.

I'm sick of journalists not having a basic grasp of the English language.

A large percentage of people fly for business reasons. Can you imagine every sales rep on your plane on the way to a meeting or conference talking loudly on their phones the whole flight?

When you land, what happens? All those phone calls you would have had to endure as a passenger all happen at once as you're trying to get off the plane.

Keep the myth alive, people.

If you've ever turned you phone on during flight, you'd know that this is a non-issue as well. Typically, you're flying way out of the range of any cell tower to get a good and stable enough signal to carry a conversation.

The only time that isn't an issue are the critical phases of flight: take-off and landing. These are times in the flight where you want people paying as much attention as possible, so use of electronics is a safety issue.

You can get a cell signal at altitude. In the right area you might even be able to make a lengthy call.

Agree on the safety issue, also with the projectile issue.

Interference, while not a primary concern, is not a myth. It's possible. There have been a handful of suspected interference incidents documented, but only one of those has been verified in testing. In that particular case I use the term verified loosely, because the levels of interference they had to recreate the incident were well above the levels transmitted by most radio devices.

"He continues that although cellular communication can 'potentially' interfere with cockpit equipment, 'in all likelihood' it doesn't"Oh, as well as a pilot, he's also an expert on electromagnetic physics and a highly qualified electrical engineer too? Marvelous.

Working tech shouldn't cause problems, but broken tech might. Thus, instead of having airline staff wandering the aisles with electrical testers, basic volt meters to see if devices work/don't work, they just tell everyone 'turn it off when there's most risk'. Simple

Because being stuck in close quarters with 150 other people who are trying to talk on the phone to anyone who will listen really sucks.

I could see people getting in fights over inconsiderate and rude behavior that comes from cell phone usage. I dont want to hear you talking to your great aunt rita about her variance of health problems.... just like you dont want to hear me leaving voice mail messages to my cat.

A large percentage of people fly for business reasons. Can you imagine every sales rep on your plane on the way to a meeting or conference talking loudly on their phones the whole flight?

When you land, what happens? All those phone calls you would have had to endure as a passenger all happen at once as you're trying to get off the plane.

Keep the myth alive, people.

Absolutely 110% this.

WHO CARES if it doesn't really screw with the airplane's electronics? If it keeps the tweenage girl from yakking on her phone in my ear the whole farking flight, I'll endure the "myth". Anything to keep her quiet.

MrDoh:"He continues that although cellular communication can 'potentially' interfere with cockpit equipment, 'in all likelihood' it doesn't"Oh, as well as a pilot, he's also an expert on electromagnetic physics and a highly qualified electrical engineer too? Marvelous.

Working tech shouldn't cause problems, but broken tech might. Thus, instead of having airline staff wandering the aisles with electrical testers, basic volt meters to see if devices work/don't work, they just tell everyone 'turn it off when there's most risk'. Simple

Did you read the rest of what he said? Who said anything about testers and volt meters? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.....

book is a added mass to the flight that comes only after you flush, 380 has big issues with tons of shiat that added, but in general use of fuel upset this, and partly why food is not served until after some time, and low budget flights that tend to carry less fuel is skipped 100%.

IsNoGood:book is a added mass to the flight that comes only after you flush, 380 has big issues with tons of shiat that added, but in general use of fuel upset this, and partly why food is not served until after some time, and low budget flights that tend to carry less fuel is skipped 100%.

your well come

What? It's a closed system, and as the aircraft burns fuel it becomes lighter. FFS, have I missed something - inflight sevice by way of a flying restaurant along side the aircraft?

The newer airliner toilets only suck on the ground and up to 10000ft. Higher then that the system uses cabin pressure to BLOW the turds to the holding tank (which, by the way, is filled with blue juice).

filter:I believe you CAN open a door before you reach cruising altitude. Pressure isn't that different. Just saying....,

I don't understand the authors point here. You cruise at something like 33,000 feet, give or take. I'm pretty sure the cabing is pressurize at something like...uh...8000 feet? I'm not sure where I read this but it certainly would explain a lot of people having ear problems and having a hard time equilizing to the new air pressure. I know I do.

I was about to mention the door opening bit, but then I realized that his explanation only works if the door opens inward. The negative pressure outside relative to the cabin pressure would make it very hard to open the door inward. Now if it opened outward his explanation sucks.

I've got a few of you pilots here favorited. Hurry up and explain this because I think this might be a competant pilot who wrote this, but he just sucks at dumbing down the facts for the plebs.

HotWingAgenda:opaqueluminosity: HotWingAgenda: During the 1980s, toilets on planes used a blue liquid that pushed waster from the bowl into a storage tank.

This liquid added weight to the aircraft

Say what? Did they teleport the blue liquid up from ground control for each flush?

It doesn't say each flush added to the weight of the aircraft...

Well the full passage says, "During the 1980s, toilets on planes used a blue liquid that pushed waster from the bowl into a storage tank. This liquid added weight to the aircraft, which consumed more fuel, and if it leaked, frozen blocks of waste could end up falling over town and cities." That implies that the flushing was what added weight, and more fuel was consumed when the toilet added that weight, potentially causing a leak in the waste tank.

I'm sick of journalists not having a basic grasp of the English language.

It says the blue liquid they had to store in a tank added weight. They had to store it before it was flushed and it added weight to the aircraft. I think it's the reader that doesnt understand what's going on here.

Well the full passage says, "During the 1980s, toilets on planes used a blue liquid that pushed waster from the bowl into a storage tank. This liquid added weight to the aircraft, which consumed more fuel, and if it leaked, frozen blocks of waste could end up falling over town and cities." That implies that the flushing was what added weight, and more fuel was consumed when the toilet added that weight, potentially causing a leak in the waste tank.

Sadly, if the journalist had a basic grasp of the English language he would have made clear that the blue liquid that pushed "waster" into the tank came from a reservoir on the plane. The writer's failure to make that clear evidently has led at least one logician to assume that some amazing delivery system propelled the liquid onto the plane for each flush.

White_Scarf_Syndrome:filter: I believe you CAN open a door before you reach cruising altitude. Pressure isn't that different. Just saying....,

I don't understand the authors point here. You cruise at something like 33,000 feet, give or take. I'm pretty sure the cabing is pressurize at something like...uh...8000 feet? I'm not sure where I read this but it certainly would explain a lot of people having ear problems and having a hard time equilizing to the new air pressure. I know I do.

I was about to mention the door opening bit, but then I realized that his explanation only works if the door opens inward. The negative pressure outside relative to the cabin pressure would make it very hard to open the door inward. Now if it opened outward his explanation sucks.

I've got a few of you pilots here favorited. Hurry up and explain this because I think this might be a competant pilot who wrote this, but he just sucks at dumbing down the facts for the plebs.

I'm not a pilot but I landed a Cessna 172 once. Wooo!

The door blowing outward issue applies to the cargo hold doors not the passenger doors.

HotWingAgenda:That implies that the flushing was what added weight, and more fuel was consumed when the toilet added that weight, potentially causing a leak in the waste tank.

I'm sick of journalists not having a basic grasp of the English language.

I took it as there probably a pair of tanks, one for fresh and one for waste. It makes perfect sense to me. Simply having that system added weight and also had other potential problems. Even if the wording is somewhat poor I'd like to think that a little common sense would fill in the gaps...

italie:Interference, while not a primary concern, is not a myth. It's possible. There have been a handful of suspected interference incidents documented, but only one of those has been verified in testing. In that particular case I use the term verified loosely, because the levels of interference they had to recreate the incident were well above the levels transmitted by most radio devices.

So, the only proof that a consumer device caused radio interference was when the strength of the recreated signal was greater than the consumer device is able to produce? That means that the never happened then. You might as well say that's it verified that a toddler can punch a hole in an engine block. Hell, it's "possible".

Plane electronics are HEAVILY shielded for this very reason. No mass market cell phone is able to effect a properly designed plane. It might be an issue for random third world planes but here in the first world it isn't an issue.

Think about this, when the plane is on the ground and during ascent and decent it's being bombarded with radio signals anyway. Thousands, if not millions, of radio signals from varying sources stronger than produced by a cell phone are hitting the plane anyway.

Although technically possible it's not probable. It's never happened in this modern age, there's never been proof of it, and as such it is a myth.

"I was about to mention the door opening bit, but then I realized that his explanation only works if the door opens inward. The negative pressure outside relative to the cabin pressure would make it very hard to open the door inward. Now if it opened outward his explanation sucks."

"The door blowing outward issue applies to the cargo hold doors not the passenger doors."

Newer emergency overwing exit doors are designed to open outward on a hinge instead of the "plug" type, and this is the same for cargo doors: almost every door that isn't plug type has pins or latches. When you pressurize the cabin, you create the differential pressure that pushes a plug type door into the frame, and that same differential pressure pushes the pins/latches against their corresponding holes/bars. The amount of friction created from that pressure makes it impossible to move the pin/latch, and you'd likely break the handle that would release them before you got any of them to move, provided the metal used in the pins/latches is strong enough, and you don't have a motor working to help you unlatch it (see UA 811).

italie:Interference, while not a primary concern, is not a myth. It's possible. There have been a handful of suspected interference incidents documented, but only one of those has been verified in testing. In that particular case I use the term verified loosely, because the levels of interference they had to recreate the incident were well above the levels transmitted by most radio devices.

Yup. No matter how well designed and how frequently inpected, the electronics in a plane aren't perfect. Shielding wires get disconnected, grounds aren't perfect, due to corrosion, wear or breakage. MOST of the time, you're fine, but please don't make that phone call when the plane's coming down through rain and clouds and the pilot's depending on the ILS to find the runway. We'd like to LAND on the runway, not be splattered all over it because some d*ckwad's cellphone signal interfered with the ILS system.

Yup. No matter how well designed and how frequently inpected, the electronics in a plane aren't perfect. Shielding wires get disconnected, grounds aren't perfect, due to corrosion, wear or breakage. MOST of the time, you're fine, but please don't make that phone call when the plane's coming down through rain and clouds and the pilot's depending on the ILS to find the runway. We'd like to LAND on the runway, not be splattered all over it because some d*ckwad's cellphone signal interfered with the ILS system.

They bother to shield the wires now? I thought they didn't do that, so they could save weight.

CtrlAltDestroy:HotWingAgenda: That implies that the flushing was what added weight, and more fuel was consumed when the toilet added that weight, potentially causing a leak in the waste tank.

I'm sick of journalists not having a basic grasp of the English language.

I took it as there probably a pair of tanks, one for fresh and one for waste. It makes perfect sense to me. Simply having that system added weight and also had other potential problems. Even if the wording is somewhat poor I'd like to think that a little common sense would fill in the gaps...

italie: Interference, while not a primary concern, is not a myth. It's possible. There have been a handful of suspected interference incidents documented, but only one of those has been verified in testing. In that particular case I use the term verified loosely, because the levels of interference they had to recreate the incident were well above the levels transmitted by most radio devices.

So, the only proof that a consumer device caused radio interference was when the strength of the recreated signal was greater than the consumer device is able to produce? That means that the never happened then. You might as well say that's it verified that a toddler can punch a hole in an engine block. Hell, it's "possible".

Plane electronics are HEAVILY shielded for this very reason. No mass market cell phone is able to effect a properly designed plane. It might be an issue for random third world planes but here in the first world it isn't an issue.

Think about this, when the plane is on the ground and during ascent and decent it's being bombarded with radio signals anyway. Thousands, if not millions, of radio signals from varying sources stronger than produced by a cell phone are hitting the plane anyway.

Although technically possible it's not probable. It's never happened in this modern age, there's never been proof of it, and as such it is a myth.

It used to happen all the time. All I've ever experienced from it is a static clicking through the headphones. I've never had one interfere with a navigation system. Since things have gone digital, its increasingly more rare to have any interference at all.